Quick and Dirty Battle Born

You are one of the few remaining immunes (from the Pacification Virus) and belong to the misfit Squad 76, known as the “Spirit of Baltimore” (of 100 squads with #1 being the best and #100 the worst). Battle Born, part of the League’s Military Assault and Combat Expedition (MACE) or as the troopers say, “Most Anyone Conscious and Expendable,” are equipped with an overly-complicated, mech-style battle suit. In a poker game, Sarge managed to win a Resolution Class dispatch ship, the Dauntless Perisher. Your job is to carry out the League’s orders to the best of your ability (command’s expectations are very low, very very low) while keeping the pacified and unarmored (affectionately known as squishies) safe (usually from your malfunctioning EE suit or poorly aimed kinetic shells).

Design Notes

Back in the 1990s, Space Gamer Fantasy Gamer under Red Rahm published a freestyle game each issue. The first issue published by Red included a game called Battle Born. I always enjoyed the game and the setting and wanted to play it again sometime. With time short, I wanted a simpler system and then ran across Lasers & Feelings by John Harper. I decided to mash Laser & Feelings and Battle Born to get a simple system that still felt like Battle Born. Lasers & Feelings is brilliant and I’m not sure if this mashup is as good as either original game, but what the heck.

3 Replies to “Quick and Dirty Battle Born”

In the spirit of Battle Born, the suits weren’t overly complicated. In fact, they were quite lethal when not interfered with. However, humans (and players) being, well, what they are, they use them in unexpected ways, and thus get unexpected results.

Same with the Tetra-League, Universe, Multi-Verse and Time Space Continuum. If you use it in new and different ways, expect pear shaped results. Best to read the Owner’s manual.

I’ll have to look at “Lasers and Feelings,” but these “Q&D” Battle Born rules look very much like something Conrad would have whipped out as a play variant.

Fiverr did a great job on the EE-Suits! He took the design cues from Todd Pickens’ designs and tweaked them up just a bit while keeping them immediately recognizable. Ok, so all the added glowy light would be a “-1” modifier to “False Image” but they’re cool!

I’m going to stop now before I put anything else in “quotes”–oh, DAMMIT!